The War of the World by Niall Ferguson Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West

Astonishing in its scope and erudition, this is the magnum opus that Niall Ferguson's numerous acclaimed works have been leading up to. In it, he grapples with perhaps the most challenging questions of modern history: Why was the twentieth century history's bloodiest by far? Why did unprecedented material progress go hand in hand with total war and genocide? His quest for new answers takes him from the walls of Nanjing to the bloody beaches of Normandy, from the economics of ethnic cleansing to the politics of imperial decline and fall. The result, as brilliantly written as it is vital, is a great historian's masterwork.

Niall Ferguson is Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University, a senior research fellow of Jesus College, Oxford University, and a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He is the bestselling author of "The House of Rothschild" and "Colossus,

Unrated Critic Reviews for The War of the World

Kirkus Reviews

Ferguson also establishes that until the collapse of the German leadership’s morale in late 1918, Germany was actually winning the war by any important measure—though vastly economically inferior to Britain, Germany had defeated three of the Entente powers and came close to defeating France, Brit...

Kirkus Reviews

Still, Ferguson writes with an eye for the telling detail, showing, for instance, that anyone who professed surprise at the Third Reich’s program of expansionism could not have been paying attention, since Hitler publicly announced in 1936 that “the German armed forces must be ready for combat wi...

The New York Times

Some of the workers check genitals and anus for gold, diamonds and valuables.
The 20th-century war of the world ended, Ferguson argues, with the conclusion of the Korean War in 1953, though as he says, it is absurd for us to remember the cold war fondly as a time of peace and stability when ...

The Guardian

The War of the World
by Niall Ferguson
Penguin £25, pp746
Television tie-in books, of which this is a distinguished example, have the fundamental problem that they are both more, and less, than the programme they accompany.

Publishers Weekly

Many readers will disagree with Oxford historian Ferguson's (Paper and Iron) daring revisionist account of the Great War as presented in this superbly illustrated book, but none will be bored by his elegant marshaling of facts to support his case.

India Today

In the last, published two years ago at a time when the imperial temptations of George Bush's America was the most favourite angst of the left-liberals, he argued that Washington was not playing out the moral script of an empire: "The United States has acquired an empire, but Americans themselves...